OTTAWA — Canada’s newly minted Department of Indigenous Services has taken responsibility for an additional 250 drinking water systems on First Nation reserves, bumping up the number of drinking water advisories it has promised to eliminate by March 2021.

The move means the federal government now has 91 drinking water advisories to eliminate in the next three years, up from 67. The majority of the 24 new advisories are on reserves in Ontario, with the oldest dating back to 2001.

In total, the federal government has now taken responsibility for more than 1,000 of the roughly 1,500 water systems on reserves.

“We must get this done,” Indigenous Services Minister Jane Philpott said during an announcement Tuesday. “We are firm on the commitment that the prime minister has made, and we will get the work done.”

The announcement was part of a briefing on the priorities of the new department, which was created after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced last August that Indigenous and Northern Affairs would be split in two, with Philpott taking responsibility for Indigenous health care, child welfare, education, infrastructure and other services.

Philpott said the new water systems include community centres and nursing stations that weren’t previously funded by the federal government.

Since the Liberals formed government in November 2015, 40 long-term drinking water advisories — those that have been in place for more than a year — have been lifted from on-reserve drinking water systems. But 26 new advisories have been added in that time. The government is also keeping tabs on an additional 21 short-term drinking water advisories that are at risk of becoming long-term.

According to a government backgrounder, communities can issue advisories if there are water line breaks, equipment failure or poor water filtration, but also if there is no one trained to run the water system or to test the water quality.

The PBO estimated $3.2 billion would be required to bring water and waste water systems on reserves in line with non-First Nations communities.

The government expects to lift 20 of the remaining 91 advisories in 2018. But 42 of the advisories still have no scheduled completion date. “Looking forward to 2021, some projects are still in the design phase or do not yet have a full construction schedule,” the document says. “In these instances, March 2021 is the placeholder for any final completion date until any earlier completion date is confirmed.”

Still, the department claims it “remains on track” to lift all long-term advisories by March 2021. “The end of the curve is steep,” Philpott said Tuesday. “We are working… with the departments and these affected communities to see if we can accelerate that.”

Philpott said individual advisories can sometimes take two or three years to lift, in some cases because equipment can only be moved to isolated communities during certain times of the year. She also stressed the importance of training water operators and “making sure that the people will be there for the long term.”

Last month, before the new advisories were added to the list, Canada’s budget watchdog published a report that found the government was spending only 70 per cent of what it would cost to eliminate boil-water advisories on reserves. The parliamentary budget officer estimated that $3.2 billion would be required between 2010 and 2020 to bring water and waste water systems on reserves in line with non-First Nations communities.

Tuesday’s announcement did not come with a promise of more funding. Philpott said two-thirds of the $1.8 billion promised in Budget 2016 for on-reserve water and waste water infrastructure has not yet been spent. That year’s budget also included $141.7 million over five years for drinking water monitoring and testing on reserve.

“We will make sure that the resources are there so that funding will not be an issue to meet that target,” Philpott said.

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